Faceblock

Facebook is apparently trying to censor me.

This past Tuesday, I tried to post links on Facebook to the latest posts on both the blog you are reading right now and to my blog advocating for the base eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf to be sold in North America, and I got this notification for my regular blog:

And I got this notification for my other blog:

Apparently my blogs are considered spam because any post from either one "includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive."  

I have no idea what I could have said on either blog that would count as "abusive."  I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about current events an occasionally bitching about Ford or commenting on classic rock.  Was it something I said about hip-hop?  Because I know a lot of people of Facebook love it, and I hate it.  Was it something I said about COVID?  Who knows?  And on my other blog, I keep writing over and over about the Mark 8 VW Golf and how I want the base model to be sold in the U.S. and Canada despite VW's decision not to offer it here.  Someone suggested to me that Volkswagen of America found that blog abusive.  Ha - that would mean I'm getting somewhere if I'm getting under their skin! 

Be that as it many, this reeks of censorship.  In the time we have left before the Republicans find a way to regain power and fix it so that the Democrats can never do the same (I guess  I could get censored for saying that!), one of the rights I have as an American is freedom of speech, but while I can mouth off in this space and on my VW Golf blog, my freedom of speech obviously does not extend to posting links to my blogs on Facebook, as the folks that run it have every right to restrict anything that violates their "community standards," as my blogs now apparently do.  But it has not yet been explained as to how my blogs violate said standards, what the complaints of abuse were against them, and whether I can do anything about it.

Oh yeah, Facebook also wiped out all of my earlier links to both blogs and blog posts.

I've protested the decision to ban links to my blogs to Facebook's grievance officers, but the company is hiding behind the COVID pandemic by insisting that the public health crisis means that my case cannot be resolved quickly.  Come on, man - the folks who run Facebook are working from home in their jammies!  They can't handle my grievance because they can't make it to the office?

In the meantime, I can only post links to my blogs on Twitter, which I've been doing since I joined that platform.  And by the way, I can still post links to my beautiful-women picture blog on Facebook - which I've never done, perversely, on Twitter - but since the emphasis on that blog is photos taken mostly by someone else, I can't call what I do on my beautiful-women picture blog writing.  However, it's not a controversial blog, except to those who think women shouldn't be judged on their looks (I'm not doing that, I'm just showing pictures!).  Perhaps what I say on my other blogs is just too controversial for Facebook to handle.  And yet right-wing conspiracy theorists post there all the time.

Hopefully I can get this resolved soon.  But I'm not betting on that.  My blogs, though, will continue.